


Hell (But Make it Homemade)

by shybitch



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Drugs, Gen, a lot of Mac thinking and complaining about Luther and Dennis and being Dramatique, but like that goes without saying, references to macdennis, takes place after The Gang Goes to Hell pt. 2, while Charlie is mildly supportive but mostly like ... please stop...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 13:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17788109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shybitch/pseuds/shybitch
Summary: They just got back from almost dying (or actually dying and coming back to life, depending on which one of them you ask), and Mac's still pretty torn up about the whole Dennis betraying him and destroying his dad's letters thing. He copes with the help of alcohol, his best friend, and a little boohooing.





	Hell (But Make it Homemade)

**Author's Note:**

> partially inspired by "mac and charlie get stoned" by golden_geese
> 
> i feel like i'm not great at writing dialogue for charlie, and the whole crying fic thing is overplayed, but here ya go anyway.

Mac’s hand felt shaky as he raised the bottle of whiskey to his mouth. His face screwed up as he took another swig, his mouth puckering at the taste like he was 12 years old and stealing sips from the bottle in the center console of his father’s truck again.  
  
Sitting on the stained rug in Charlie’s Bad Place, Mac understood his best friend’s impulse to surround himself with broken things. The presence of a shattered lamp there, a clock with unmoving hands there, and, of course, Charlie himself, reassured Mac that he wasn’t quite as fractured as he felt, or, at the very least, he was not the most fractured creature in the room.  
  
The weed, the alcohol, and the strange space clouded his judgement, making him feel like he was on another plane of existence entirely - one governed by the rules of his best friend’s mind.  
  
His face felt numb. He wondered how much whiskey he needed to drink to get his heart to stop aching. His father had written him letters, and Mac had not answered. Mac had abandoned him.  
  
“Ah, man. Mac, don’t do that,” Charlie complained, as Mac’s tears started to fall down his cheeks.  
  
“Shut up,” Mac mumbled. He leaned away from Charlie and wiped at the tears with his hands, but they kept falling. He tried to breath slowly, to keep his cool, but he couldn’t remember how to breathe. He either had too little or too much air at any given time. His chest and his throat worked against him, making these pathetic noises that did not feel very badass.  
  
Mac jumped as Charlie wrapped an arm around his shoulders. In the darkness, Mac could barely make out Charlie’s features. His arm was a reassuring presence, though, resting loose on his shoulders, like this was not a big deal. His hand curled around Mac’s shoulder cap, his thumb fidgeting against the fabric of his t-shirt. Mac forgot why he was crying, but for some reason being held like this made it worse: the tears fell faster. His head spinning, he leaned against Charlie, making his body small so he could rest his head against Charlie’s shoulder. He could hear his heartbeat, slow but loud in the quiet room. Charlie’s still smelled like the ocean.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mac asked, his voice coming out thick.  
  
“Tell you what?” Charlie asked.  
  
“You know. My dad’s letters. Why didn’t you tell me Dennis was destroying them?” Mac asked.  
  
“Well,” Charlie shifted to sit up a little straighter. “I did tell you.”  
  
“How long did you know?” Mac asked. It’s suddenly important.  
  
“A while,” Charlie said.  
  
Mac let that sink in. He should have felt like yelling, but he did not. He felt like some crucial part had been ripped out of him, leaving him empty and devoid of the usual anger.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Mac asked. He sat up, so his head wasn’t on Charlie’s shoulder anymore.  
  
“You and Dennis have your own thing. I don’t know - I didn’t want to get involved-”  
  
“Since when do any of us mind our own business? Also, it’s not like it was a me and Dennis thing, Charlie. It was a me and my dad thing,” Mac snapped. He remembered the whiskey in his hand, and drank some more from the bottle, the brown liquid burning his throat.  
  
Charlie did not answer immediately. He took a drag from the joint he’d been working on, and slowly breathed out the smoke, before responding. “Your dad is dangerous, Mac.”  
  
The tears fall again, hot and angry. “He wanted to talk to me. He wrote to me because he missed me, and he wanted to tell me about his life, and he’s not dangerous.”  
  
“Dennis thinks that he is,” Charlie said. He knew the weight that Dennis’s opinions carried.    
  
“Dennis doesn’t know him,” Mac said. “He looks at him, and he sees this- this criminal, but that’s not fair because - The justice system in America is broken, and -”  
  
“He sees your father, dude,” Charlie said. “Dennis doesn’t give a shit that your dad decapitated some other guy with a stop sign-”  
  
“That wasn’t him,” Mac corrected, holding up a finger.  
  
“I’m just saying. He thinks he could hurt you. Or him,” Charlie said.    
  
“My dad would never do that,” Mac insisted.    
  
“Mac. We faked our deaths for a week because we thought your dad was going to kill us. We made a whole Powerpoint,” Charle said.    
  
“He doesn’t know him,” Mac repeated stubbornly.  
  
Dennis wasn’t thinking of the Luther that took care of Mac the week that his mother left, making him pasta with ragu sauce for dinner, and buying goldfish crackers he could take with him for a lunch. Sure, he didn’t stay around every night, but there was always something in the fridge or the cupboard. Mac didn’t go hungry.  
  
Dennis didn’t think of the Luther that bought him Christmas presents (although through somewhat illegal means).  
  
When Dennis thought of Luther, he thought of Mac and Charlie faking their deaths to hide from him. He thought of Mac’s bad dreams. The occasional bruises on Mac’s arms back in high school that Mac always found a way to explain away.  
  
“He wouldn’t hurt me. He loves me,” Mac said.    
  
“Then why didn’t he say it in the letters, Mac?” Charlie asked.  
  
Mac wiped away the tears springing up in his eyes again. “Because you don’t always have to say it, okay?”  
  
Charlie squeezed his shoulder. Mac sniffled, before continuing, “Dennis isn’t always right, you know. He’s been wrong about a lot of things. And how am I supposed to trust him? He could have said anything about my dad’s letters.”  
  
“C’mon. What he said sounded pretty standard for your dad,” Charlie said.    
  
“…You agree that it was wrong though, right?” Mac asked.  
  
“Ripping up the letters?” Charlie asked.  
  
“Yeah,” Mac said.  
  
“Yeah, it was wrong,” Charlie said. “…Does that make you feel any better?”  
  
The whiskey’s just as strong halfway through the bottle. Mac’s face contorted as he answered, “No. I feel like shit.”  
  
“The whiskey isn’t helping,” Charlie said, almost cheerfully, tapping a finger against the glass bottle.  
  
Mac set it on the floor. “I’m sorry, dude. For being a mess. I just - I don’t know. I feel like strangling Dennis sometimes. And it’s like he’s asking for it. With the fake crying shit and the- the whole thing where he was pretending to be my dad.”  
  
“That was pretty funny though,” Charlie pointed out, for posterity.  
  
Mac continued without much concern for his audience. “It’s like - I want Dennis to feel bad. I want him to ask me for forgiveness and he knows it… So even if he says he’s sorry, it’s all a show. It’s the quickest way to cool me off… The worst part is: I’ll go home. He’ll reach out and touch my arm like nothing is wrong. And I’ll want to forget anything happened.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, Mac. Don’t then,” Charlie advised. “Stop expecting Dennis to be something he’s not. When he lies to you, you only believe him because you want to.”  
  
How much does Charlie know? Does he know that Mac cannot go a day without his stomach fluttering from Dennis’s thigh brushing up against his, or from the way that Dennis laughs, with his eyes crinkling up at the edges?  
  
Does he know that sometimes at night Mac thinks about kissing Dennis slowly on his twin extra long mattress back at Penn State, their skinny legs tangled up? He remembers Dennis’s lips finding his neck for the first time and carefully sucking hickeys where they’d be difficult to hide.  
  
Dennis said he could tell everyone back home he’d hooked up with a sorority girl. He fed him this whole story of a blonde sexual deviant with large breasts and a purple bra, letting Mac pretend that it was turning him on when it was really the cadence of Dennis’s voice, and the weight of Dennis’s body on top of his.  
  
Dennis believes his lying and pretending make him a better, more palatable version of himself. Sometimes Mac cannot figure out where the real Dennis ends and the performance begins. Mac recognizes his Dennis, the Real Dennis, in the morning when he’s still drinking his coffee and grumbling about burnt toast. He recognizes him in the late hours of the night, after he’s had a few vodka tonics, when he’s leaning against Mac with something shiny in his eyes.  
  
_You only believe him when he lies to you because you want to_ , Charlie had said.  
  
Dennis wants to believe his lies too, most of the time. Dennis wants to be sorry, if that’s what’s needed from him.  
  
“Maybe you’re right,” Mac said. “But what am I supposed to do? Stay pissed at him all the time?”  
  
“I don’t know. Like I said, you guys have your own weird thing that I try not to get involved in,” Charlie said.  
  
“It’s not weird,” Mac said.  
  
“Complicated,” Charlie mumbled. “And weird.”  
  
“You’re weird dude,” Mac pointed out.      
  
Charlie shrugged. “Weird knows weird.”  
  
“Whatever… How does this work again? You get fucked up, smash some shit, and then you feel better?” Mac asked.  
  
“Pretty much,” Charlie said.    
  
“And does it help?” Mac asked.  
  
“Sometimes,” Charlie said.  
  
“Worth a try,” Mac said.  
  
He drained the rest of the whiskey and then threw the glass bottle against the wall. It’s satisfying to hear it shatter. Charlie’s beer bottle hit the wall next.  
  
“How are we going to get around the glass when we want to leave?” Mac asked.  
  
“You just sweep it to the side to make a path.” Charlie said.  
  
Charlie does not clean the Bad Room. The Bad Room exists with shards of glass around the edges of the walls and spare nails rolling around on the floorboards. There’s a wire hanging from the ceiling, liable to scratch you if you’re not paying attention and moving about carefully, with your arms stretched out in front of you. But there’s something comforting about a mess of your own making, like if you break a bottle and choose to sit by the glass, it can’t hurt you.  
  
Mac’s breathe felt steadier. “What else is up here to break?”  
  
“Oh, all kinds of stuff,” Charlie said.


End file.
